Old-age allowance

Governments need facts and figures to do the job of governing properly. Hong Kong's lack of an officially recognised poverty line has meant that the poor are prone to fall through cracks in our welfare system. One of our most respected NGOs, the Council of Social Service, contends that one in three elderly people are now needy, putting the number for the first time over 300,000. The figures are shocking for a city so wealthy, but in the absence of official recognition, they are little more than a disturbing statistic.

About 290,000 elderly residents in need may receive a new monthly allowance of HK$2,200 from April after the administration executed what critics said was a carefully devised tactic in Legco that cut short a filibuster.

As a former legislative councillor, I find it difficult nowadays to explain to visiting friends that the legislature is becoming unbalanced because many lawmakers seem excessively tied down by two issues.

Firstly, there is the immoderate filibustering on an increased allowance of HK$2,200 for the elderly.

Hong Kong is ready for democracy, you say? Go tell that to the 400,000 impoverished senior citizens who struggle daily to survive. Democracy has derailed immediate government relief for them, while grandstanding politicians use them as pawns.

Burglars escaped with cash and valuables worth HK$787,000 after ransacking three flats at All Fit Garden in Bonham Road, Mid-Levels, on Saturday night. The thieves climbed into the flats from scaffolding.

Democratic Party member Law Chi-kwong has criticised his own party and its Legco allies for calling on the government to waive a means test for a new old-age allowance, suggesting that it was a breach of political ethics.

He said he was "fading out" of party affairs "to speak for what is right".

Means testing of elderly entitlements is a sensitive issue involving respect for age and social equity. Five years ago, former Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen gave in to intense public pressure and scrapped a plan to means-test the old-age allowance for people over 70 when he raised it to HK$1,000.